A manufacturer of sports shoes starts selling consumer electronics. A soft drink lends its name to a range of urban clothing. What's going on? In simpler times, you knew where you were with brands. One brand name meant good-quality sports shoes, another a soft drink. No confusion. Today, however, big companies try to redefine brands as not so much a product, more a way of life, and stretch them into new areas. In the early years of the consumers society, a brand name on a box simply identified what was inside. People were looking for products that would improve their quality of life, and chose brands most likely to achieve that purpose. But as people in industrialised nations became more affluent and fulfilled their basic needs, brands acquired other attributes. The functionality of the product was still important, but people also started using brands to say something about themselves, for example, choosing a brand of cosmetics which would suggest that they were sophisticated jet-setters.

一个生产运动球鞋的制造商开始卖销售类电子产品。一个软饮料使他的名字出现在城市服装上。这是怎么回事？在越来越简单的时代，你知道你生在品牌中。一个品牌的名字意味着质量好的运动鞋，另一种品牌代表着软饮料。不会混淆。然而今天， 大的公司试着重新定义品牌，与其说是一种产品，不如说是一种生活方式，并将他延展到其他新的领域。在销售者时代的早些年，一个包装盒上的品牌名字只是辨别里面是什么。人们正在找一些提高他们生活质量的产品，并选择最有可能实现这一目标的品牌。但是随着工业化的国家变得越来越富有并且满足了他们的基本需要，品牌获得了其他属性。产品的功能仍然非常重要，但是人们也开始使用品牌去描述他们自己，比如，选择一个品牌的化妆品，代表他们是一个有生活品味的有钱人。

Now, we have entered a third age of branding, in which so many companies are making roughly the same product at roughly the same price that functionality rarely succeeds as a point of differentiation. Instead, companies are trying to make their brand stand out by emphasising their emotional aspects, hoping consumers will identify with the set of values the brand represents.

如今，我们已经进入了品牌推广的第三个时代，在这个时代如此多的公司都在以大致相同的价格生产大致相同的产品，以至于用功能性作为一个差异化很少能成功。相反，公司正在试着让他们的品牌强调他们的情感部分，让自己的品牌脱颖而出，希望消费者能认同品牌代表的价值观。

One disadvantage of a product-based brand is that if the product goes out of fashion, the brand goes with it. This is a serious concern for manufacturers of breakfast cereals, who are struggling to counter weak demand for the products that bear their names. So far, their marketing efforts seem to be having little effect.The advantage for emotional brands is that companies can transfer their brand strength into other areas, increasing revenues and reducing their exposure to the lifespan of a single product.

一个以产品为基础的品牌的缺点是，如果这个产品过时了，品牌也随之过时了。这是早餐类谷物类生产商来说，这是一个严重的问题，他们正努力应对以他们名字命名的产品的疲软需求。到目前为止，他们的营销成效收效甚微。情感品牌的优势在于，公司能传递他们的品牌优势到其他领域，从而增加销售，并减少单个产品使用寿命的影响。

The elasticity of brands seems to be related to their position on a spectrum ranging from those rooted in solid, tangible assets to those with highly intangible, emotional qualities. At the one end, you have train companies that tend to associate themselves with infrastructure and their ability to get you from A to B, and at the other end would be a leisure brands that positions itself on dreams and making people have fun. It is the latter which has the maximum potential for stretch.

品牌的弹性看上去像跟他们一个范围内的地位有关，从扎根于有形资产品牌到具有高度无形的情感品质的品牌。一方面，你拥有的火车公司倾向于将自己的基础设施和能力结合起来，让你从A到B, 另一方面，这将是一个休闲品牌，将自己定位于梦想并让人们获得乐趣。后者拥有最大的延展潜力。

But even emotional brands have a limit to their elasticity. The merchandise has to be consistent with the brand premise. Just to sell merchandise with your logo on it is a short-term, mistaken idea. From this viewpoint, the decision to move from sports shoes into consumer electronics makes sense. Most items in the range, such as the two-way radio for hikers, are sports-focused, even though the products may be adopted as fashion accessories, and the sports shoe customers will probably snap them up.

但是即使是感情品牌，其弹性也是有限的。商品必须和品牌一致。仅仅售卖带有品牌LOGO的商品是一个短期的，错误的想法。基于这种观点，把从运动鞋转移到消费类电子产品的注意是有道理的。该产品系列中的大多数商品，比如面向徒步旅行者的双向收音机，都以运动为重点，即使这些产品可能作为时尚配饰，运动鞋的消费者也可能会抢购。

When the move was made for soft drink into clothing, however, it left the branding consultants cold. It was a difficult mental leap into clothing from the drink so closely associated with that particular brand name. One the other hand, the emotional attributes that youngsters seem to find appealing in the drink, like its heritage and global appeal, are fashionable at the moment, and in fact response to the clothes with the same name has been overwhelming. Maybe this just shows that an inspired move- and by all accounts a snap decision-sometimes pays off against the odds, leaving the manufacturer laughing all the way to the bank.

当从软饮料品牌进入到服装领域时，然而，品牌咨询师却无动于衷。这种饮料和特定的品牌名称紧密相连以至于让人们很难从头脑中想到服装品牌。另一方面，年轻人似乎觉得这种饮料有吸引性的情感属性，例如他的传承和全球的吸引力，目前很流行，事实上，对于同名的服装品牌反应强烈。 也许这只是表明，一个有灵感的举动-从各方面来看，一个仓促的决定-有时会带来意外的回报，让制造商一路笑到最后。